Saturday, December 10, 2011

Best for last

What is England? It's cows and countryside. It's antiquing and ale. It's markets and medieval castles. It's refined but simple pleasures that make you unreasonably happy - like the Wedgewood plate with the Queen's silhouette on it I found in Ludlow for 1 pound.

Our hosts, the wonderful Janet and David, delighted us from dawn till dusk. We started with freshly-warmed croissants and jam and granola and yogurt and fruit salad. We then drove out in their his and hers Audis to Ludlow, a quaint town that they really love visiting. We really loved it, too. First, in both outdoor and indoor markets, we browsed through thousands of knicknacks from mugs to pin to earwarmers to books to thimbles. Lots of things I don't need but wanted. Afterwards, our strange family outing continued to Ludlow Castle, a destroyed medieval palace estate in the middle of the cute town. The admissions people gave us a family ticket as long as we would 'keep mum about it' - I don't think anyone would've cared but 20-year-old American very fraternal triplets with two British parents? Not so reasonable. But we have felt very much at home with them here in the Midlands. The castle was all broken down but I have a Medieval England fetish so I enjoyed the moat to the fireplaces. The view from the guard tower was exceptionally lovely with tudor-walled farm houses and church spires in the distant rolling green hills.

We had a beautiful lunch at a glamorized pub called Feathers. Then we strolled through the town back to the bakery and market for a few last minute pick-ups. We found lots of marmalade marketed as 'made with Seville oranges' - the same ones we walk by every day in Spain...which are supposed to be too bitter for eating.

Kate and I both fell asleep in the car on the windy roads through pastures of sheep. I woke up at Witley Court, another old British ruin site. My extraordinary powers of imagination took over as we wandered the grounds and ransacked, burned halls of the palace, originally owned by the Earl of Dudley and then some others. A great fire damaged too much of the magnificent house in 1937 and the owners couldn't pay to have it fixed. So, all of the insides were stripped away and sold, from marble busts to copper pipes. The emptied house was sold for just 4000 pounds a few years later. It had taken the equivalent of hundreds of thousands to put it all together. Witley used to be home to true glamor - banquets and fireworks for all of the nation's nobility, diamond-decorated Christmas trees to burn guests' eyes, fountains with 100 feet of water blasted into the sky, and gardens arranged in patterns for miles into the distance. Ah, the poetic life of British royalty. One day...

Anyway, we moved on to a gilt-painted church next door, which people had the money to preserve and protect even as the house next door fell to complete ruin. It was very pretty, and not overwhelming to look at, like most of the churches I've been to. Kate and I played a game of comparing our favorite European places of worship as we walked back to the parking lot. Sacre Couer or Sagrada Familia? Cathedral of Sevilla or Cathedral of Granada? Westminster Abbey or Notre Dame? Tough decisions. What a rough semester we've had.

Now we're snuggled on the perfectly worn couches of the green room in Janet and David's house.   I'm writing this blog as "Strictly Come Dancing" just ended, British "Dancing with the Stars." We looked through pictures of their world travels from India (they've been everywhere - Sharm Al-Sheikh, Sinai Peninsula, Egypt for the umpteenth time is next!) while enjoying the warmth of a fire and cool sips of white wine.

Must I go back to Spain tomorrow? Must I go back to America next week? Why was I not born a duchess? These are the big life questions I have to ask myself tonight and always.

(Insert frustrated and facetious exagerated sigh here. And tell me to really turn up the studying for finals!)

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